Thursday, February 12, 2009

I've been reading and posting on the main tanking forums more, especially now that there's news of a new mechanic in 3.1. There's quite a few good posters and good players there, and it's nice to be able to talk with other tanks in a sort of free flow of information that isn't quite so moderated as EJ.

At the same time, there are a ton of druids that are irrationally afraid of what's in store. And one of the things I keep seeing is this basic idea:

I don't want to talk about the incorrectness of the latter; the math has been demonstrated, and it's clear from simple examples that this is going to depend on a lot of things. What struck me as odd is how the identity of the druid tank really seemed to be wedded to having high armor. It didn't matter that things like crushing blows were removed or that bears were given protector of the pack. It doesn't matter that right now, druids are the least spiky they've ever been in the history of WoW (better magic mitigation, usable barkskin in forms, no crushes, PotP, and use of consumables in forms all attribute to this).

All that seemed to matter is that they have huge armor.

I guess I can see that; armor was a huge deal in TBC after all, though avoidance became a lot more important when we could stack 80% of it. But I never really thought of it as my identity. Though to be fair I don't tend to think of myself as a druid or a bear anyway; that's just the toon I play on WoW. But when I think about druids and druid tanking, the thing that I think of first is something I've mentioned before.

Versatility.

To me, playing a feral meant being able to tank in some places and DPS in others. It meant being able to pull using ranged aoe spells and build extra aggro via healing myself. It wasn't in the bosses that I could tank or fights I was more advantaged on, and it certainly wasn't about my gear or the specific values on that gear. Honestly, it's tough for me to imagine any druid identifying with much in the way of gear since itemization was so ass for such a long time; should you identify with the Pillar of Lol? How about that awesome Badge of Tenacity?

No, to me it was about experimentation. About thinking about approaching things differently, figuring out ways to work around disadvantages (like pvp gear or intervenes on shears), to take certain problems (not using potions in bear) and making them advantages (getting 40% more health with a pot drinking macro). For me, that's basically morphed into figuring out what gear and spec I can use to be a great tank and a good DPS at the same time, or how I can tank Sarth without using anyone else's cooldowns.

Nothing intrinsic to feral playing has really changed thematically. Only the specific problems to be solved have. That's a good thing too; I like solving new problems. I like having to figure out new ways to do gear and specs and encounters. That's where I get a lot of pleasure from WoW.

I think that if they made ferals ridiculously rigid - akin to prot/other specs in the other tanking classes - that would make me seriously consider another class. If they made it so that the stats that bears use for tanking and DPSing were hugely different (which is close to what TBC was like) and the spec was hugely different - so much that you could not do decent DPS as a cat while bear-specced - would make me want to switch.

I'm curious though - what do you all think about this? Is being the high-armor, big physical hit tank what being a feral means to you? If you lost all your extra armor and had exactly the same armor that you do in cat but nothing else changed, would that bother you? If you were forced to spec into cat or bear so that you really couldn't do much in the way of damage when bear-specced, would you care?

What's your concept of a feral druid? And what would make you not want to play a feral any more? What's your sacred cow?

32 comments:

I play WOW because I like both the cooperative and competitive nature of the game.

I chose a Druid because of the versatility of the class and my knowledge going in that the majority of my time would be limited to playing and leveling 1 toon.

I think what we ask as Druids is to allow us to perform at the same level as other classes when we play our characters at the highest level.

When the best Balance or Feral Druid plays perfectly yet we have trouble keeping up with the Agro or DPS or whatever measurable competitive statistic with other classes is I think when people get upset. (note I left out the Resto tree that kicks all the healers butts)

I personally pride myself on the numerically unmeasurable.

Knowledge of the game, understanding of my class, helping my friends and guildmates, preventing a wipe by going bear or shifting out of bear with the right cooldowns up to throw a BREZ or Innervate.

I am lucky, my guild compliments me on my gameplay but not everyone that plays is so lucky.

Same as yours - versatility. I love finding a way to use all aspects of the class in a raid.... or even better, in a single fight. Or figuring out how to battle res while main tanking, or stepping out of cat form to heal when things get silly.

I started out as Resto. Being at that point the only class I liked, knowing how rare druids were in the beginning and how much healers were wanted. Purely to serve the guild I would eventually be in. I leveled to 60 as resto.

About a year ago I went offspec feral and liked it and in WotLK I am full feral. Though I do know there might be a point where I am bored with my current play. So my decision... Stick with my druid.

The great thing about druids is that you can do every aspect of the game. Ranged and melee dps, tanking and healing. No other class can do that and I have a nearly full balance set though trying it questing for 3 days. only thing I can say is that balance bores me very much! But you never know...

There is pure tanking spec, and there is "good enough" tanking spec that leaves a bit of room for some, pretty crappy, dps. A hybrid spec is good enough to raid but still I feel already that I might not be doing the best I can. Especially being the only feral druid in the guild I have no one to compare my dps to. DPS is always bad in hybrid spec. I don't know if I am doing a good job or acting like a 100% noob. No bothering checking stats after the fight. I suck, and there is no need or way to see how I can improve.

For feral druids it is now really time dual speccing was implemented. I already have 2 completely different sets of gear for tanking and dps (only share 1 trinket). Now it is time for 2 specs and 2 glyph sets.

Also; at the moment I am trying full dps spec and now I can somewhat compare my dps to other classes and it is not bad. Lack of a history of doing dps on fights prevents me to see how my dps is in relation to gear, class and experience.Also not having an arms warrior makes me include glyph of mangle, replacing my glyph of maul. Conclusion: as cat you are really bad in tanking!

Spec wise it is either one or the other. That was my first conclusion seeing the WotLK feral talent tree for the first time. No longer will 1 spec be enough. Druids have not 3 but 4 roles, and also not 3 but 4 talent trees.

What I think of a feral druid? There is no feral druid. Not since 3.0. It is either a tank or a dps druid. People who had not realised that still call us multi-use. Tank and dps. And though we are a better choice then a prot warrior going dps, until dual spec hits, we are crappy at best. No whole instance can you be effective unless you are Tanking or dpssing all the time.

On the other hand, when dual spec hits, druids loose the unique multi-use ability. A prot warrior in dps gear switching to fury spec can take our role while we tank every fight. Might become boring...

For me, the druid is just a means to an end. If feral gets fucked up, I've got gear ready to switch to resto or a holy priest alt who I can pick up as my main instead.

Now having said that, I do tend to identify quite heavily with any character I play for a longer period of time. It's also partly why I'm concerned about the future of it. I've seen too many issues crop up with other classes I've played in the past which have rendered them crippled for long periods of time. The current system isn't going to hold into T9 content, but then I'm not sure Savage Defence is going to do so either. I fear that we'll be stuck with a inferior mechanic that's going to relegate us to being the the tank class that's theoretically useful, but which no serious top guild will use. If that's the case, I'd rather respec resto than try to convince my guild to take what I feel is an inferior tank into the raid. We've got warriors, paladins and DK's to take my place, what's important is that the guild keeps progressing

I play Druid since TBC at a VHL content (Kil jaeden down ;) ) I was playing as a tank and a very few time as a dd because of the uselessness of the feral druid as a dd in TBC.Since LK, feral druid are able to be in the top5 dd in about all the content. All 3 feral druids in my guild perform this.More over, with a good spec/stuff, everything can be tanked easily, even sartha3D with a phat stam gemming!But what Felhoof told about a dps/tanking stuff/template make me reconsider things!Almost everything can be tanked expect sartha3D because of the need of stamina.And it is really fun to get almost 3K dps on Patchwerk (10k tps oO).And it will be better with savage defense. (with about 8k pa with dd trinket up => 2K shield ^^).

I think feral druid will still have a good tanking skill.

I enjoy TC and taking time on how to improve my druid.

To conclude, I find logical that a tanking druid can't heal, or dps less, this is the only way to be competitive in the spec we choose

Can I give you a big amen here?! I absolutely love the versatility of my class. It is the main reason I love and play a druid. I only have enough time for one main. Being a druid offers me so much in variety that I don't miss having 2 or 3 other top level characters. I can tank instances when I feel like it or I can relax and just dps or I can go solo dailies/quests.

WOTLK has made that even better. In BC I raided 70% of the time as a bear, but now 80% of the time I go kitty and am in the top five of the total dps output. I confess I enjoy cat even more because it allows my versatility to shine. Doing the Heigan dance we lost the MT about midway. The OT was a pally tank who was tasked with cleansing and additional healing. I bear'd up and helped finish the dance. Another time I brezzed the MT after he went down, dying in the process, but again saving a raid wipe. Being able to go from dps to tank in a blink or bring back a critical member and help save a raid is exactly what I love most about my class.

I do love the high armor and the gasps at how much health I have when I go full tank. But it isn't class defining. It is class characterization.

Armor+Stamina. I strive to be an effective tank. I don't want to be decent. I want to awesome. Bear iz 4 Tank! (Cat iz 4 quest)

And I don't identify my bear with my armor as much as others do. When you are tanking for people who have no real understanding for what bears should and should not have, they just ask about armor, (and if I am uncrittable! *eyeroll*).

Versatility. I like being able to help the raid at any time. Need a tank, got it. Need dps, I'm there. Need a battle rez and innervate, done. I like all the different hats a feral druid can wear and still be a contributing member of the raid!

It all depends on experience as dps (don't have that much since I mostly tank)Trying to max dps rotation on a boss ?? level dummy I do 2.7k dps selfbuffed over a 10 minute period. In raid I ended up being nr 11 in damage done (though nr 1 in dps on a boss where I was unable to dps constantly so nergy regen helped me there).This all was full cat specced. When I am hybrid specced I end up only outdpssing newbies that have just gotten their chars to 80.It might have something to do with my guild farming Naxx 25 since week 3 of wotlk and having a LOT of good gear. Since I not often dps rogues and hunters have priority over me on dps gear. So my gear is lacking a bit.

It also depends on what kind of hybrid spec you talk about. There is I think about a 400 to 500 dps difference between full cat spec and my hybrid spec. I can not see how you can ever compete on dps if you have 400 dps less then when full cat.

I love the driud versitility for sure; that's why I originally chose it. I'm glad we tank equivalently (no, better!) to the other tanks, and yes I was pushing 3.5k dps on a straight up cat dps 10 man loatheb (no spores) It was a perfect demo of what a tank specced/glypded druid can do with a change of gear.

I also enjoy rolling with the changes... and I'm able to do that. Back when "top" players fussed that crit & attack power had nothing to do with time to live or effective health - therefore proof that Blizzard had "messed it up" -I always believed Blizzard when they said the tanking current could be shifting towards damage. And now look at what's planned for mitigation scaling.

I've met enough "top" players now to know that you cant always trust their opinions. Just because you're in a guild that farms sarth+3 on you alts, doesnt mean you have anything useful to contribute to the conversation. The opposite is very true too of course. Those are the people you want to listen to. Like Kalon - he's aweomse !!!! (jk,jk)

You will find crazy "top" players on the forums. The fact that they've beaten all the content makes them believe they've "beaten" all the blizzard staff too. I wasnt aware we were at war with Blizzard but anyway... just one of my pet peeves.

Character idendification happens a lot - I think that depends on the person. My druid is a toon I play, and though I love him to bits, he's not "me" - and I'm absolutely not confused about the difference. So I can deal with "my" armor changing, "my" mitigation mechanics changing. "My" health changing. I can deal with it, because I love playing video games and I trust the designers. They've done such a good job consisently for so long, and they're always improving.

I apologise for being so optimistic and having so much fun with my druid. I have resisted the pressure to become miserable, suspicious and cynical, and I will continue to resist that pressure, no matter how hard people try to force me. Good luck to you too Kalon!

You can look me up on the wow armory: Karthis, Garona-US. I'm in my DPS gear, and my hybrid spec. My guild, like yours, has been farming Naxx forever.

> It all depends on experience as > dps (don't have that much since I > mostly tank)

Sure - but you claimed that hybrid DPS was bad, period. If you have little experience DPSing then you'll put out poor numbers regardless of what class you play - never mind spec. =) (And remember - all ferals had to learn the new rotations with WotLK.... our DPS cycle in nothing like what it was in TBC)

Haha kalon, I just read some of the threads on the offical forum re savage defence. The best comment in there, as usual, is from GC "its not a buff or a nerf per se....we want to make gearing as a bear tank more interesting"

That whole argument you're having about math? The simple thing your wife came up with? You've got to remember that although they teach this stuff in 4th grade, by the looks of it, many posters are getting a lot more wow-time than school-time. I could use the word "irrational". But after reading some of these posts, I'd rather describe it as "uneducated rambling".

I chose my druid originally because I only wanted to level one toon and have the potential to play any role in a raid.

My concern with the upcoming tanking change is that for the first time in my WoW career I'm the go-to tank in the guild rather than the tank people will settle for if the warrior or the paladin isn't around. I love the comments I get because of how little damage I take from Patch while soaking hatefuls. I love how my healers jokingly complain about being bored healing me when I catch them dps'ing in Naxx. And in all honesty I'm loathe to give that up.

My guess is that some of the fear and loathing being directed at Savage Defense is a direct result of the fear of a large percentage of the bear tank population of being forced out of the MT positions in progression raids that it feels like we just won.

It does seem that Savage Defense has the potential to be a great change and provide for some fun gearing options, so I'm hopeful. But if they miss the mark and I'm forced back into perma-OT status a la TBC I'll be sorely disappointed.

"But Prot dps sucks and even in full bear spec when you go cat you do 1k like more dps and you do take more damage now after all...it's just better for the raid if you're OT." Bah. Time to reroll if I want to tank full time.

Jacemora - thanks as always. And I really liked this line:I personally pride myself on the numerically unmeasurable.

That's an awesome description.

Karthis - I kind of figured that. I think that I tend to underemphasize the cat aspects compared to you and Flyv, but it's still there.

Marino - my findings and yours are different. Perhaps your guild has absolutely excellent DPS across the board, but I think being able to do 5k+ on Patchwerk and 4k+ on Maexxna is not bad.

Shamad, I do share your concerns. I don't think that Blizzard has ever had a really good idea of where druids fit in in the tanking pantheon, and a lot of the big decisions over the last few years have been to try and badly rebalance it. TBC could be summed up as 'trying to keep the bear down' - and failing at it. I think that SD is a step in the right direction because it's an inherently more stable solution to balance based on more stats and give them less weight. But it's not a guarantee that things will work out. Hopefully folks like you will be around to show them when they're wrong in a way that can make it right.

Frederic, I'm glad you're having a good time. You really should try cat dps with a few less talents in bear; it's surprisingly awesome and fun.

Willowbear, I liked this too:But it isn't class defining. It is class characterization.

Exactly.

Sassafras - so are you saying that if stamina and armor values went away but you got something that would make you awesome in another way, it'd be a deal breaker?

People I run with when I’m tanking, especially naxx, always call out “Druids are the best tanks for this” or what ever. And it’s an easy conclusion to jump to when I’m sitting there raid buffed up to 40k hit points. And yet, we as a group were still wiping. A lot. I had my gear up to very nice “starting Naxx level”, and I was running with a friend of mine on his DK as the other tank. Both of us are very capable of doing this. But as a group, the pug we put together was not. Several weeks in a row.

The thing I love about being a feral druid, the thing that defines the class to me, is that I always seemed to be picking up a piece of healing leather here or there while in heroics and in naxx. Because nobody else could use it, period. This week, while putting together the pug for naxx I decided to switch it over to resto, and see if I couldn’t do a better job then the pug healers we were getting. I had already gotten all the gear enchanted and bought the glyphs, so I figured why not. And I melted the other healers face with my heals. We progressed much farther and faster in one night then we ever had before.

Being a Druid to me means being able to switch roles and perform very well. Yeah we get beat around wit the nerf bat sometimes, but over all now that I’ve put the work into heroics and raiding and professions and such, I can go into the hardest places in the game and perform any role very well. I can’t wait for dual specs so it’s not such a pain in the ass to change around. Being able to do either of the two roles that are hard to find people for will be very nice for me personally.

@kartisChecked your armory. You got better dps gear in almost every spot.The difference in spec is that you don't have improved mangle in hybrid and have predatory instincts instead. I think i'll do that too then. You might even have an arms warrior in your raids.

Still nothing changes in the fact that there is no need in comparing my dps to others when I am not in my optimal dps spec. Like comparing apples and oranges.

The reason I hate armor nerfs is really simple... every patch from just prior to WOTLK to now has had an armor component to it and changed the itemization that was optimal for druids... I want to have a reliable set of clear guidelines for selecting gear that isn't going to change patch to patch.... just stop patching already... It isn't giving me more choices to have to bag gear I've already got in order to have to work on new gear. It's not really the armor its the constant change... I can't feel like I have a goal if I continually have to go to theory-crafters for the next list of gear nerfs.

I love that i can be in a full bear spec then swap my gear and do decent dps just spamming mangle :)

Duel spec will most likely mean i have a bear/heal spec..damm raid leader >< Id luv to be able to have a full cat spec for when i dps on boss.

My druid started it life in BC as a heal and i can say i was quite good out healing many fully epic healers in kara with all blues but i tried feral for a bit and liked it so much that come toward the end of BC he was my 25 man raids backup tank and i got to tank a lot of BT/MH while our tanks had breaks etc.

I have since droped the rogue at 70 and the Druid is one of my guilds 3 main 25man tanks.

Ive played Feral as my main ever since i changed guild at the latter stages of TBC and they were in need of a good tank. Ever since then ive been in love with the class. It was the first tanking character i had played and since then tanking is what i find to be the ultimate satisfaction in wow.

The versatility of a Feral, particularly since wotlk, is unparalelled. What other class can main tank a raid boss and with a carefully timed cast battle res the noob healer that died to a flame wall? Or in the same scenario throw an innervate to that awesome dps lock who is causing the healers too much stress with their inopportune lifetapping?

Is there any other class that could be a solid DPS on boss then rescue the raid by instantly switching to a solid tank when the MT repaints the floor with his face?

Hell we can even main tank Sapphiron then go hide behind an iceblock and pop a nice tranquility to help out the raidhealing then go right back to tanking.

Druid tanks are simply themost flexible class in the game right now and i love that fact, its what makes a druid tank worth playing over say a prot or a pala.

That being said if blizz were to get things horribly wrong and these proposed changes were to make us yet again 'inferior' tanks that would only be used in the absence of a warrior, then yes i would have to reroll. i dont want to be a tank if im second choice and it is not based on my ability, just the limitations of the class i choose to play. and lets face facts its not beyond belief for blizz to make such an error in judgement is it :p

Well, just remember blizzard did post recently that it's understandable that tanks are worried they may loose their MT role with future changes. That may have been in a druid discussion... or it may not have been. Understand that warrs, palls, druids to a lesser extent DKs all share the same worry: "no more MT for me, some other tank is going to overtake me." That should give us cause to relax, knowing that NOT allowing a tank class to fall behind the others is very high on blizzards agenda.

It a a really good compromise between tanking and dd.With the stuff equiped on the armory, I am able to tank everything expect sartha 3D (lack of stamina.... but with a full stam gemming, it is still possible :) with a good management of raid cooldown)

Playing the druid for me is all about flexibility and options. I'm very excited about dual-specs since I could do any role: tank, heal, ranged dps, melee dps. It's great.

People tend to react negatively to change because it puts them out of their comfort zones. So unless the changes are straight-up buffs, people will QQ one way or another. Many of them are pretty apocalyptic about it too, saying things like nobody will EVER take druids anymore, etc. I'm personally looking forward to the changes.

Having said that, Blizzard indeed have been fucking things up a LOT with Wrath. If they fuck druids up, I have other toons that I can switch to.

What Oiysters said. I agree with him completely. I managed SWP as a Feral and I had 3 gears and was constantly swapping around Feral Tank,DPS and Heal whatever was required. DPS was my weakest part even though I had the strongest gear of all 3. Tanking and Healing performed better. Tanking only performed very good until 3.0 hit. Then after slowly getting pushs to be on warrior level in post T5 at post BT/T6 I was happy with how it was, but no... soon there came the nerf.

Blizzard is incompentet to do good contentBlizzard is incompetent to do larger amounts of contentBlizzards earns millions of dollars and cannot hire some dozens of developers to get on and QA, fix overbuffing, fix overnerfing, do real content (housing, RvR, feral forms, a new approach to PvP as Arena and personal rating just sucks as permanent farming in AV sucks)

It is just annoying, and you know it too. Let's hope (for you and my friends still playing) that 3.1 content will be great. My tip don't be too sure that tanking or DPS will scale far into T8/T9/T9.5

I'll keep playing my druid though ;) Nearly 500 achievements done. Not gonna do that again. Anyway I laugh too hard being druid. Today (not using flask of stoneblood) I was for the fun wearing my polar gear. With survival instincts I had 66.9 k health raidbuffed. I would have never laughed so hard playing any other class!

@ Three posters up (Anonymous):I couldn't agree more. It just seems to me that ever since the original designers, lead by the great Bill Roper, left Blizzard to form Flagship (and Hellgate: London), WoW's quality has had an overall downward trend.

Releasing Naxxramas AGAIN because "it fits the lore very well" is total bullshit. The real excuse is more along the lines of "we've got neither the resources nor the vision to create new content." I don't want to pay $15/mo to redo content I farmed two years ago.

PvP is a mess. It's been a mess since Wrath beta and many top-notch players voiced reasonable concerns (often with math to support) and potential solutions. What we've been hearing regarding the problems so far has been:"They'll be fixed for release,""they'll be fixed once you hit 80,""they'll be fixed when you have 900 resilience,""they'll be fixed in 3.0.8," "they'll be fixed in the next major content patch," and now according to blue:"We're working to get 3.1 up soon. It won't have all of the class changes in it initially though."

It's taking way too long to get it right. What baffles me even more is how Blizzard basically releases beta-quality content that they "plan" to fix shortly. It's as if they have become a schedule-driven company, rather than the quality-driven company we've come to know. I remember how I found it very refreshing when they said they won't release TBC until it's deemed ready. WotLK didn't quite follow the same pattern and has been a failure IMHO.

Dont care about numbers, dont care about stats, dont care about other tanks, dont care about Ulduar or Sarth 3D - whats more sacred than anything to me about being a bear is the unique characteristics of the form - it's a big, bad, angry and vicious creature, giving it a little magic bubble (is it going to be pink with little ribbons on aswell?) to defend itself with is just lame, stupid, and unwelcome.

@ last post: you mean the open mouth that looks like the bear is kind of brainsick and mentally stupid?

besides that, I am happy that I did not continue with WotLK - I would be really really pissed right now. I mean if SD was really really great (active or just better in another way, just reducing dmg statically and scaling with ap and agi) and if there where HUGE HUGE HUGE PVP buffs like old shapeshifting (1sec immunity) and shapeshifting gcd going for 0.5sec as well as mana drain/leech... I'd consider ... but this is just fucked up feral now - 3.1 is a big laugh

ThinkTank bio

About Me

Kalon likes playing tanks, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. He is not as hardcore as many but spends a lot of time thinking about WoW, and randomly rants about it now and then. He played formerly on the Argent Dawn (EU) server and was a founding member of Fire and Blood (Quel'Dorei) before joining Casually Serious, a guild devoted to hard core progression on only 8 hours of raiding time a week.
He is a devoted husband, father, and when he has the time programs software.